


a memory, a delusion

by meowstelle



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Memoirs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 15:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7580335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meowstelle/pseuds/meowstelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Itachi -- as Kisame thought he knew him. KisaIta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a memory, a delusion

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to write some more fanfic, since it seems I'm incapable of writing about anyone but Itachi at the moment. This is what I considered "unidealized" KisaIta, though I love to fantasize that they probably did have a closer relationship.

He was young, strikingly so. His aura was heavy air; his words felt the gravity and often times dropped Kisame’s heart to the floor. They spent their first night in a small town, in a grimy motel room (Kakuzu refused to budget more funds for lodging), sharing one queen sized bed. Kisame recalls stepping out from a steamy shower, catching Itachi in what was at first a bizarre moment of intimacy – the sunset leaked through half-closed blinds – the room alight in summer orange dust – Itachi – his thin torso like a marble statue – brushing his hair.

Kisame learned too easily to love his hair. He appreciated its thick coarseness after it dried from a shower. He smelled its oils at night, knowing Itachi would wash it the next morning. He marveled at how the hairs stuck to Itachi’s skin when wet, dripping water lazily down his back.

Itachi had problems. While at Akatsuki meetings, members would bitingly praise his bloody feat of massacring his family. He listened to these words, eyes dark and blank and void. Kisame and the others knew that he was soft. It was a tacit agreement to humor the tough, stoic exterior Itachi presented before them.

Every night Itachi put the eye by his bedside. He kept it in a jar, suspended in liquid. It was red, grotesquely veined, with a curious Sharingan pattern circling the pupil. Every night Itachi cupped it in his hands, his eyes red, engulfed in a – what was it? A memory, a delusion? 

He slept too soundly – not like a ninja at all. Kisame thought it must be trust. His chest swelled with pride (affection?) when he kept watch while Itachi slept. The blood left on the pillow every morning told him otherwise. Itachi started taking pills from alleyway dealers. Kisame already knew he was sick when he finally told him about his illness. Together they adjusted their battle strategies – and said nothing more about it. 

After the incident in Konoha, after Itachi had beat his younger brother with his own hands, Kisame asked more questions about his past. Itachi never answered, but the sorrowful look on his face as he fingered his necklace – always looking down at his feet, pensively, like a quiet schoolboy – told him enough about his regrets.

Itachi never masturbated, never had sex, at least, not to Kisame’s knowledge. Kisame himself would occasionally splurge at a brothel visit. Only after he picked his third dark haired, pale young man did he think that maybe something was affecting his libido. From then on, Kisame never joined Itachi if he went to the local bath or hot spring. But he would think about him fondly at night, priding himself on their proximity, ashamed of their distance.

When Itachi requested Kisame distract some of Sasuke’s teammates while they fought, he gladly agreed. He savored the idea of appearing like Itachi’s ally – friend, even – to Sasuke and the other delinquents that followed him. His prideful thoughts prevented him from fathoming the death of his partner, even though he knew Itachi was in no state to fight, not with the amount of blood he left on his tissues.

He watched the black flames set the forest ablaze, the lightning decimate the building. It started raining. The emptiness in his chest, and later the bedroom, told him Itachi was dead. Zetsu confirmed his passing at the next meeting. Kisame felt nothing but quiet. That night, after many years of Itachi creating fire with his breath, he struggled to even bring smoke to damp branches.

The dwindling numbers of the Akatsuki, he thought, would help keep him company. Itachi – at least the Itachi he knew – lived and died in that red and black cloak. An odd sense of camaraderie led him. When told about his suicide mission, he agreed without thinking. He wanted to give his life for something – after all, that was his goal from the start. 

Now, in his own waters, with his own sharks tearing at his flesh, Kisame remembers not the Akatsuki, not his time as a vagabond, not his servitude in the Village of the Mist, but these moments. As his body rips apart, tainting the water with red, he tells himself not to despair, even as he knows he and Itachi would never meet in the afterlife. He tells himself that he has lost nothing, only gained these precious years. He tells himself he knew Itachi best – despite not knowing him at all.


End file.
